


My Own Salvation

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e21 Salvation, Gen, Light Angst, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post episode 1.21 'Salvation'</p>
<p>If the Winchester boys had just taken a moment together...</p>
<p>Dean is all iron and grit and fire, but in his brother's arms he's finally human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Own Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> I have to say I was ultimately disappointed with this as I found it was almost a repeat of another work I posted, but I just can't seem to get away from tearing Dean open and trying to make him express what's inside, so happy reading at any rate. Comments are always welcome.
> 
> I own nothing, just borrowing for a bit.

_“Sam, look… The three of us—that’s all we have. And it’s all I have. Sometimes I feel like I’m barely holdin’ it together, man. Without you and Dad…”_

 

Dean’s head stung from the thump Sam gave it throwing him up against the wall. His toes were barely touching the ground, and Sam had him pressed to the cheap oak paneling like he was just a sack of hollow bones.

Sometimes he forgot how tall the kid had gotten, or how strong…in so many ways.

“Dad…” Sam’s fingers unfurled from Dean’s collar, letting his weight slip down the wall. His eyes lost their wild desperate look and his mouth… It twisted momentarily into the most horrible grimace Dean had ever seen—a cross between sheer agony and heartbreak—until Sam scrubbed it away with his hands while taking a stumbling step back from his brother and then turning away. “He should have called by now. Try him again.”

Pulling his phone from his pocket, Dean swallowed back his own rising panic and that uncomfortably full chested feeling that came when his emotions—to which the word ‘repressed’ didn’t even hold a candle—started to overwhelm him, as sometimes happened, but not usually outside the darkest hours of the night when no one could hear his short hiccuping breaths into his pillow or see the fiery tracks of tears from the corners of his eyes.

He looked at Sam across the room, tortured gaze to tortured gaze. Sam’s belligerent confession of a  moment ago that he would have gladly died tonight rather than let that demon walk free had cut Dean to the core, right through that steel plated armor he wore day and night to keep all the hurt at bay. Sam had a way of finding all the chinks and laying open the worst kind of wounds. 

Now, his heart was in his throat and he wanted—needed—nothing more than to feel Sammy in his arms—warm and living—to hold him close and make the world go away for just a few precious seconds. Sam, though, was distracted and frantic, angry over Dean making him let that bastard demon go and worried because their dad had not checked in yet. He couldn’t ask—had no right to expect—any sympathy from Sam.

He flipped open the phone, thumb hovering over John’s speed dial key. 

Sam saw his hesitation. “Dean. Call dad!”

Dean shook his head once, tried to pull in a sustaining breath, tried to do what Sam was demanding; but he could feel the sob crawling up out of him like a living thing, scrabbling and scratching for purchase in his throat, struggling franticly in the confines of his ribcage. He hunched forward, chest caving in a little in the effort to hold it inside. Now was not the time to break. Sammy needed him. Their dad needed him. For all they knew, John might already be dead; but he couldn’t stop it. The flood gates were open and it was time to pay the piper in pain.

The phone tumbled from his numb fingers. Sam dove for it, grabbing it up and casting a scornful look back at Dean.

“Sammy, please…” The sob broke free, coming out as a low mangled cry into the hand that Dean clapped over his mouth in a last vain effort to shore up the emotional deluge. The other hand pressed to his chest fingers splayed and digging in trying to hold together the pieces of himself that he was positive were going to shatter apart at any second.

Sam swung around, finger on the button, and saw Dean hunched in pain. For one long slow second he took in his brother’s tense, trembling shoulders, the tears leaking from under his lashes, how he could barely hold himself up against the wall.

“Oh, God…Dean…” The phone slipped from Sam’s hand, forgotten as he covered the few feet to his brother’s side in one long legged stride and took his weight in his arms. 

The second Sam touched him, Dean’s knees gave way, and he collapsed against his brother’s chest. Together they sank to the floor in an awkward tangle of limbs, Dean’s arms coming up and around Sam, holding him with a crushing force, face buried against his neck.

Sam cradled Dean to him, cupping the back of his head, pressing his cheek against his soft hair. “Dean, I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing Dean so close to the breaking point, and it terrified him, more even than the thought of their dad dying in a foolish attempt to pass off the fake Colt. 

Dean was the tough one, the one who joked in the face of near certain death and just about everything else as well. He lived life one day at a time, always looking forward; shadows of the past never dogging his steps. At least not that he ever let anyone see. He could figure his way out of any bad situation even if it all came down to just his hard head or piston driven fists meting out justice in the form of a physical beating. He was the one who never despaired, never gave up; who dragged and pulled Sam kicking and screaming from his ruts of depression when he was so caught up in his own selfish needs that he couldn’t see any way forward. 

Dean was all iron and grit and fire.

But in Sam’s arms, tucked against him, silent sobs wracking him so hard both their bodies jerked with the force, Dean suddenly became a human being. He stopped being Sam’s bossy older brother, who was often just an extension of their old man in Sam’s eyes, and became a lonely, mostly broken man who had devoted himself body, mind, and soul to finding, fighting, and destroying evil. Not because their father did it and not in the name of some great cosmic calling. He did it to protect the only thing that mattered to him, the only thing he had left to hold onto. He did it for his family. For Sam.

Dean’s hands fisted tight in the back of Sam’s shirt and Sam tugged him that much closer, burying his face in Dean’s hair and whispering softly against his ear,

“I’m sorry, Dean. You fight so hard. So hard…for me.” He choked on hot tears that ran down the back of his throat. “And I was going to—to throw it all away. For revenge, just to see that bastard burn for all eternity. I didn’t think—I never thought…”

He didn’t know how to finish, how to tell his brother that he thought he hadn’t ever really cared about him, that he thought all he had ever been doing was chasing the dark on their dad’s orders and dragging Sam along for the ride because neither of them thought he could take care of himself. 

It had never occurred to Sam before that Dean might have come to Stanford because he needed someone beside him, needed to be reminded of what he was fighting for when the nights got too dark and too much of his blood was on the ground.

Dean choked back on another sob, sucked in a huge breath, and pulled back from Sam’s embrace. He looked up into his brother’s mossy eyes and brought his hands up to frame his face, eyes still streaming. “Sammy…there is nothing…nothing! In this world or the next, that I would ever put before you…or dad. But I just can’t let this thing kill us. I can’t let everything I’ve done be for nothing.”

He paused to swipe his face across the inside of his sleeve, trying to dry the tears that kept coming. “Sammy, you’ve got to understand. I want—I want you to have a normal life. I really do. But I…I can’t do this alone. I just need to know that, no mater what, you won’t—you won’t throw your life away, man! I need you. I need to know you’re gonna be there—always—even when you’re not right here by my side.”

“Jesus, Dean!” Sam grabbed his brother back into his arms, crushing him to his chest, he felt Dean’s warm surprised huff of breath against his neck. “Jesus…yes. I’ll be here. I promise, I’ll be here. I won’t leave you alone, Dean. Ever.”

Dean nodded against Sam’s throat and sighed heavily, shuddering a little. He sat back on his heels, cupping his brother’s jaw and stroking absently with his thumbs. Sam’s eyes watered and hot tears spilled over. 

“Don’t cry, Sammy. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

“I know,” Sam rasped. “You always have.”

Dean dropped his hands slowly, reluctant to let go of the moment. He felt raw and empty, the sobs having torn free all the black fear and anger at Sam’s and their father’s self destructive proclivities and washed it away. For one fragile moment, the future felt manageable, and an ember of hope flickered weakly deep in his gut, warming and reaching for the certainty that Sam was with him and would always be with him. He would keep Sam safe. That was his job. That was his salvation.

He reached for the phone that had fallen a few feet away, and held it between them, meeting Sam’s now anxious again gaze and flipped it open. 

“It’s time,” he said. “Let’s go get Dad.”


End file.
